Australia is “a compliant partner, a strategic captive of the US,” says Fraser.

He cites US blunders like the war in Vietnam and the second Iraq war and the needless mass deaths that followed and asks:

“Does Australia want to be tied to a power that can involve itself in such actions?”

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The risk that the US could go to war with China, of Australia “being forced into a war that was not in our interest,” is so great that we have to “cut the ties” to America.

But for such a big provocation, Fraser’s proposal has attracted remarkably little attention.

This is partly because Fraser has long been dismissed as a post-prime ministerial convert to leftist causes.

He was, after all, the army minister and then defence minister who avidly supported Australia’s part in America’s ill-begotten war against Vietnam.

But the main reason for the great silence is that it is a distinctly uncomfortable idea for Australia’s political system.

The last mainstream political leader to challenge the sanctity of Australia’s US alliance was Mark Latham. No leader wants to be another Latham.

It’s easier for former leaders rather than current ones. Perhaps that’s why, while no serving leader is calling for a rethink of Australia’s relationship with its great and powerful friend, two former prime ministers are.

Paul Keating for several years now has urged a reconsideration.

Keating, too, is concerned at the emerging strategic rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and the possible consequences for Australia.

Keating cites what he calls “the Keating mantra” and that is: “Great states need strategic space and that if they are not provided some, they will take it.”

He wants the US to take a step back, to allow China to assert a bigger place for itself, which is exactly what it is doing, as its latest friction with Vietnam last week demonstrates.

But where Fraser urges Australia’s government to give up on the Americans altogether for fear of war, Keating wants Australia to try to change America’s ways to avoid war.

It’s the difference between the former lover who has written off the wayward ex, and the former lover who still thinks the ex can be reformed.

Keating wants Australia to try to shape the outcome of Sino-American rivalry.

But Fraser has taken a more extreme position, a position that now defines the outer limit of mainstream Australian debate.

Several of Fraser’s key observations are quite right. First, the US has made some dreadful blunders, the war in Vietnam and the second Iraq war foremost among them.

Second, Australia has been uniquely supportive even when the US is guilty of misjudgment, willing to follow the US into every major conflict since World War II.

Fraser writes: “While Australians believe that, for Australians, this is the best country in the world, we do not proclaim exceptional privilege and virtue for ourselves.

“We do not claim that we are endowed by God to bring justice and peace to the world. We do not automatically assume that what works in Australia will work elsewhere.”

He’s right that most of the senior Australian politicians of the past 30 years, in my experience, have been uneasy, in private, with America’s messianic tendencies.

Fourth, Fraser correctly points out the popular misconception of the nature of the alliance as a national 000 emergency line.

It’s a myth that the US alliance is guaranteed to bring assistance in the event that Australia comes under threat; it commits the two countries only to consult, no more. But Fraser then takes these accurate observations and draws two conclusions from them.

First, Fraser asserts that Australia has lost the capacity for independent decisions.

But it’s not true that Australia can’t make its own choices. Canberra has chosen to go all the way with the USA; Washington has not coerced it.

Fraser suggests that the close tactical intertwining of US and Australian forces is a set of strategic handcuffs.

Not so. Even the closest allies can come to different conclusions. Britain opted out of Washington’s Vietnam misadventure, yet their relationship survived and thrived.

From that flawed conclusion comes Fraser’s second and biggest misjudgment – that the only solution is to jettison the alliance altogether.

The alliance with the superpower is an asset for Australia to manage in its national interest. Fraser writes from the gut, not the head.

This is a peculiarly unwise moment for Australia to discard a major ally.

The Philippines broke off its alliance and expelled US forces 20 years ago; last week it signed an agreement to allow the US more freedom to operate in its territory.

Why? Because the Philippines, bullied by China, has realised it had no recourse but to yield to Beijing. Even the biggest powers, like Japan, are today reaching to the US for reassurance in the face of Chinese force.

No Australians want to see their country in a slavish alliance with America.

But the alliance is an advantage for Australia to draw on judiciously, to be neither followed obsequiously nor discarded rashly.